Frontline
Ansari & Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s farewell address to former Vice President Hamid Ansari not only betrays his own biases but points to the clash of two nationalisms that India now faces: Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism. By A.G. NOORANI
IN all the annals of
ceremonials, it would be hard to find a more uncivilised send-off than
the one that Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari received from Prime
Minister Narendra Modi on August 10 in the Rajya
Sabha, which he had presided over with singular distinction for a whole
decade. The televised proceeding exposed to the whole country what a
noted academic, Ananya Vajpeyi, so aptly described as “a humiliating
farewell” in which the Vice President “was rudely
demoted from the status of an Indian citizen, patriot and public
official to a narrowly defined and ideologically confirmed member of, as
they used to say in press reportage of communal riots until quite
recently, ‘a certain community’” (The Hindu,
August 22).
Equally offensive is the
commonly used epithet “nationalist Muslim”. But it is highly significant
since it reveals the mindset. If Jawaharlal Nehru is hated by the Sangh
Parivar, it is because he mercilessly exposed
this diseased mentality which never speaks of “nationalist Hindus”
except in the communal sense. “On 11 May, 1958, he told a meeting of the
AICC [All India Congress Committee] that the ‘communalism of the
majority is far more dangerous than the communalism
of the minority’.” He was certainly not condoning the latter. But as he
explained later, on January 5, 1961: “Communalism is a part of our
society.” He refused to accept that one particular community was
communal and not the other. However, “when the minority
communities are communal, you can see that and understand it. But the
communalism of a majority community is apt to be taken for nationalism.”
The only good Muslim is a
Sarkari Muslim, an Uncle Tom, or a dead Muslim. Muslims are not unique
in having Uncle Toms in their midst. The Parsis had the Congressman one
in R.K. Sidhwa. He got his just deserts from
Sir Homi Mody in an interview he gave to The Times of India published
on August 29, 1947. Referring to the rights of minorities in the
Constitution that was being drafted, he said: “So far as Parsis are
concerned, the position as I found it in the early
stages of the discussions in the Minorities Sub-Committee was that the
very existence of the community as a national minority was being
questioned in certain quarters. This was the result of its renunciation
all these years of any special privileges for itself,
either in the legislatures or in the public services. My business was,
therefore, to secure a sort of statutory recognition for the community
as an important minority which had played a notable part in the struggle
for the political and economic emancipation
of the country. When this was secured, I decided to follow the
traditions which the community had maintained in the past and withdrew
all claims for special reservation. …
“From the report of the
discussion which took place yesterday in the Constituent Assembly, I
find R.K. Sidhwa has sought to make out that I had veered round to his
point of view. With regard to that, I would only
say that if Sidhwa had had his way, Parsis would not have received any
sort of recognition and would not have figured at all in the political
map of the country. Happily, the Minorities Sub-Committee did not regard him as representing the Parsi point of
view, and the community is today in the position of having secured a
recognition of its special place in the political life of the country
and has earned for itself general goodwill.”
Now just ask yourself one
question: Had the Parsis been discriminated against, is there the
slightest doubt that any of its leading figures would have spoken up?
And if they had done this basic duty to the community and
to the country, could one have doubted their patriotism?
Muslim and Indian
Delivering the convocation
address at Kashi Vidyapith on August 14, 1935, Dr Zakir Hussain said:
“There are a few well-meaning but extremist nationalists who have a
concept of Indian nationalism which will consider
Muslims’ claim to such a right as dangerous to the integrity and
progress of the country; but if our educationists earnestly consider the
problem of Indian education, then I am sure they will willingly accept
Muslims’ aspiration to base their education on
their own culture. That will be good education and wise politics at one
and the same time. You will forgive me if I express this view plainly
before this august gathering that while among the considerations that
wean away Muslims from Indian nationalism are
personal selfishness, narrow-mindedness and the absence of a correct
vision of the country’s future, it is also due to a large extent to the
deep suspicion that under a national government the existence of Muslim
culture will be imperilled. Muslims are not
willing to pay this price for unity under any circumstances. I, not
only as a Muslim, but as a true Indian, am glad that Muslims are not
ready to pay that price; because, not only will Muslims suffer thereby,
but the composite culture of India will also be
the poorer for the loss. That is the reason why Indian Muslims, because
of their religion, history, culture, and their cultural aspirations
consider their common identity valuable not only for themselves but
precious also for the Indian nationhood. They regard
its destruction or weakening to be not only oppressive to themselves,
but a betrayal of the nation as well. Indian Muslims do not love their
country less than anyone else. They are proud of being part of the
Indian nation, but they will never like to be a
part whose identity is destroyed. They agree to be good Muslims and
good Indians.”
On March 21, 1940, just two
days before the Muslim League adopted the Lahore Resolution on Pakistan,
Maulana Azad presented an alternative in his presidential address at
the Congress session in Ramgarh. He said:
“I am a Muslim profoundly conscious of the fact that I have inherited
Islam’s glorious traditions of the last thirteen hundred years. I am not
willing to lose even a small part of that legacy. The history and
teachings of Islam, its arts and letters, its civilisation
and culture, are part of my wealth and it is my duty to cherish and
guard them. As a Muslim I have a special identity within the field of
religion and culture and I cannot tolerate any undue interference with
it. But, with all these feelings, I have another
equally deep realisation, born out of my life’s experience, which is
strengthened and not hindered by the spirit of Islam. I am equally proud
of the fact that I am an Indian, an essential part of the indivisible
unity of Indian nationhood, a vital factor in
its total make-up without which this noble edifice will remain
incomplete. I can never give up this sincere claim.
“It was India’s historic
destiny that its soil should become the destination of many different
caravans of races, cultures and religions. Even before the dawn of
history’s morning, they started their trek into
India and the process has continued since. This vast and hospitable
land welcomed them all and took them to her bosom. The last of these
caravans was that of the followers of Islam….
“Eleven centuries have passed
by since then. Islam has now as valid a claim on this land as Hinduism.
If Hinduism has been the religion of its people for several thousand
years, Islam, too, has been its religion
for a thousand years. Just as a Hindu can say with legitimate pride
that he is an Indian and a follower of Hinduism, so can a Muslim proudly
claim being an Indian and a follower of Islam. I would go further and
say that an Indian Christian (or the follower
of any other religion) can similarly claim, with legitimate pride, that
he is an Indian following one of her many religions.
“Eleven hundred years of
common history have enriched India with our common creative and
constructive achievements. Our languages, our poetry, our literature,
our culture, our art, our dress, our manners and customs
all bear the stamp of this common life. …
“Our shared life of a
thousand years has forged a common nationality. Such moulds cannot be
artificially constructed. Nature’s hidden anvils shape them over
centuries. The mould has now been cast and destiny has
set her seal upon it. Whether we like it or not, we have now become an
Indian nation, united and indivisible. No false idea of separatism can
break our oneness.”
Clash of nationalisms
All this was said as
president of the Congress. There was not a murmur of dissent. Elsewhere,
at Ahmedabad, the president of the Hindu Mahasabha, V.D. Savarkar,
propounded the two-nation theory in 1937. His acolyte
was Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who founded the Jana Sangh in 1951 in a
compact with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). Its progeny was the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, 1980). India now faces a clash of two
nationalisms: Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism.
The Constitution of India is based on Indian nationalism.
Ours is a plural society
governed democratically under the rule of law. Every interest has a
right to voice its views, demands, grievances and laments; labour,
industry, peasants are a whole range of interests,
whether State or municipal, as well as teachers, students and
minorities, linguistic, cultural or religious.
The Constitution reflects
this liberal outlook. The fundamental rights not only assure every
person, whether a citizen or a foreigner, of equality before the law or
the equal protection of the laws (Article 14)
but also recognise the minorities as a collective entity by
conferring on them certain rights as minorities. “Every religious
denomination” is assured the right to establish its own religious and
charitable institutions (Article 26); every linguistic
minority has the right to “conserve” its “distinct language, script or culture of its own” (Article 29) and “all minorities,
whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to
establish and administer educational institutions of their
choice” (Article 30). If, then, any of these rights of a minority is
violated—for example, discrimination in recruitment in police service or
discrimination by the police services in affording protection from
violence—can it fairly be argued that the minority
itself must keep quiet and not protest?
Yet, this is precisely the
attitude adopted towards Muslims. Unfortunately, the community has
produced a rich crop of Sidhwas of the most hideous kind. They go so far
as to deny that the minorities have a distinct
interest which calls for protection. Thus, on December 29, 1980, at the
very first session of the BJP, when the political resolution was being
discussed, Mehboob Ali made an innocuous and unexceptionable suggestion:
the minorities’ interests must be protected.
The mover of the resolution, Sikandar Bakht, rejected the suggestion in
good Uncle Tom manner. “Minorities were not second rate citizens and
had equal rights as the majority had under the Constitution. The use of
the terms majority and minority should be avoided”
(The Hindustan Times, December 30, 1980).
How low this tribe can sink
became clear to me during a visit to the State Department of the United
States in February 1993. A top official dealing with South Asia told me
that Sikandar Bakht had visited him and
bitterly complained of the “aggressiveness” of Muslims. He was sharply
told off: minorities are entitled to be aggressive if they are
discriminated against. They are aggressive everywhere for the same
reason, including in the U.S., the official said.
Nehru exposed this school in his Autobiography.
“The Hindu Mahasabha is always laying stress on its own irreproachable
nationalism when it criticises Muslim communalism. That the Muslim
organisations have
shown themselves to be quite extraordinarily communal has been patent
to everybody. The Mahasabha’s communalism has not been so obvious, as it
masquerades under a nationalist cloak. The test comes when a national
and democratic solution happens to injure upper-class
Hindu interests, and in this test the Mahasabha has repeatedly failed.
The separation of Sind has been consistently opposed by them in the
economic interests of a minority and against the declared wishes of the
majority.”
Savarkar propounded the
two-nation theory in his presidential address in 1937 (much before M.A.
Jinnah did), amplified his thesis in Hindutva published in 1924, and emerged as the BJP’s icon when it took
up the Ayodhya issue. The RSS supremo M.S. Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts (1968)
drew on Hindutva. Common to both is the rejection of “territorial
nationalism”—everyone born in India is a national—and espousal of its
antithesis, “cultural nationalism”,
which is synonymous with Hindutva.
From 1996, the BJP’s election
manifestos swore by it. The 1998 manifesto had a section on “Our
National Identity, Cultural Nationalism”. It asserted that “the cultural
nationalism of India… is the core of Hindutva”.
L.K. Advani, as the BJP’s president, told the BBC: “It would not be
wrong to call the BJP a Hindu party” (Organiser, August 5, 1989).
Narendra Modi, his former protege who had him discarded for good,
proudly said when he became Prime Minister in 2014:
“I am a Hindu nationalist.”
Modi as Hindu nationalist
As in most things, including
the style of governance, Modi simply replicated his record in Gujarat.
Christophe Jaffrelot’s essay entitled “Narendra Modi between Hindutva
and sub-nationalism: The Gujarati Asmita
of a Hindu Hriday Samrat” (India Review, 2016, pages 196-217)
repays study. He recalls what Modi said at a public meeting on September
9, 2012: “The Muslim philosophy is ‘hum paanch, hamare pachhees’ (We are five—allusion to Muslim polygamy—we
will have twenty-five children)—an open criticism of the high Muslim birth rate that many Hindus fear.”
“Narendra Modi’s
identification with the religion of the majority found expression in the
invitations he extended as Chief Minister to Hindu clerics and saintly
figures to public functions or in the fact that he
attended religious functions in Hindu sacred sites only. For instance, sadhus took
part in the grand celebration of the mixing of water in Ahmedabad when
new canals took the Narmada to the Sabarmati in the city in 2002 for a
grand function known as
the Narmada-Sabarmati Sangam. He then performed a puja from a boat near
Ellisbridge, along with Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the then president of
BAPS (the main branch of the Swaminarayan movement), which was ‘telecast
live on four giant screens along with pyro
techniques’.
“Symmetrically, many years
later, in 2010, Narendra Modi inaugurated the new, post-earthquake,
Swaminarayan temple in Bhuj (Kutch), while emphasising in his speech
that ‘Cultural nationalism is once again leading
our country on the right path that was shown by saints and sages
centuries ago.…’ Three years later,
he was the chief guest of the 60th anniversary of BAPS youth
activities. This grand function, which brought together 60,000 people at
the Sardar Patel Stadium
in Ahmedabad on 6 January 2013 was inaugurated by Pujya Mahant Swami,
who was to officially become the chief of BAPS in March 2013, and
Narendra Modi. The former garlanded the latter on stage and they both
lit the inauguration deepa (lamp).… Similarly, the
tradition of Iftar parties was discontinued by Modi in Gujarat.”
Attack on Hamid Ansari
True to form, in his very
first speech in the Lok Sabha as Prime Minister, Modi lamented a
thousand years of slavery: British rule plus Mughal, to him,
Muslim-rule. Like the RSS, he is at war with history. That
explains his rabidly communal speeches during the Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh election campaigns; that explains his studious refusal to
condemn the lynching of Muslims; and that explains his attack on
Ansari.
Modi began with a snide
insinuation of insincerity, diplomats dissimulate; another on his
ambassadorships to West Asian countries over the years where he was
contaminated, “in that atmosphere, in that thought,
its debate and around such people” (read: the abominable Muslims).
Even after his retirement,
horror of horrors, he “remained in that circle”. For, he became Vice
Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University and Chairman of the Minorities
Commission. But for 10 years as Vice President,
he assumed a different responsibility. That was spelt out to buttress
the aspersion of insincerity by suppression of Ansari’s own beliefs, as
if a Vice President is supposed to promote any ideology whether his own
or that of the state. But that is precisely
what the Modi regime wants. Seshadri Chari, a former editor of Organiser and member of the BJP’s National Executive, told The Hindu(August 18) that Ansari should have served as “a bridge between the government and the Muslim community”.
Presumably, that is what is
expected of the sprinkling of Muslims who have received alms from Modi.
Endowed with such an outlook, Modi’s attack in the finale becomes as
understandable as it is revoltingly cheap.
“You now have the joy of being liberated and the opportunity to work,
think and speak according to your core beliefs.”
But Ansari was ever a public
servant committed to the values and discipline of public service,
whether in West Asia, Australia or as Permanent Representative to the
United Nations. What irked Modi & Co. was Ansari’s
remark to Karan Thapar the day before on the insecurity among Muslims
and Ansari’s Indian nationalism, which does not exclude mention of
wrongs done to Muslims—a trait that marks the true Indian nationalist
from the authentic Sarkari nationalist.
The record on both Muslims’ insecurity and Ansari’s nationalism is incontrovertible. On August 15, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson released the Report of the Commission on International Religious Freedom
for 2016. It said: “There was an increase (in 2016) in violent incidents by cow protection groups against mostly Muslim victims, including killings, mob violence, assaults and intimidation.” Such actions are not exactly calculated to foster a
sense of security among Muslims.
Manini Chatterjee’s crisp
summary tells all: “The Sangh Parivar’s foot soldiers and storm troopers
make no bones about their mission to make India a Hindu rashtra. It is
not just the lynchings in the name of cow
protection that mark this mission. It is in the daily invocations to a nationalism imbued with Hindutva:
making the singing of Vande Mataram compulsory in schools, deleting
Mughal history from textbooks, altering facts to glorify a mythic Hindu
past,
uttering cries of “Jai Shri Ram” at official functions, imposing diet
codes on everyone during Navratri, abusing an outgoing Vice President
for expressing the same concerns that an outgoing President did because
the former is a Muslim and the latter is not”
(The Telegraph, August 14).
Americans did not impugn Colin Powell’s nationalism when he complained
to a Congressional Committee about the poor recruitment of blacks in the
armed forces.
Ansari’s world view
In his scholarly addresses,
Ansari’s world view emerges with inspiring clarity. Just four days
before the TV interview, he addressed the 25th Annual Convocation of the
National Law School of India University at
Bengaluru. It has 34 footnotes, a characteristic of his addresses. He
spoke on the representativeness of legislation, the functioning of the
legislatures and the like.
“Since a wall of separation
is not possible under Indian conditions, the challenge is to develop and
implement a formula for equidistance and minimum involvement. For this
purpose, principles of faith need to
be segregated from contours of culture since a conflation of the
two obfuscates the boundaries of both and creates space to
equivocalness. Furthermore, such an argument could be availed of by
other faiths in the land since all claim a cultural sphere and
a historical justification for it. In life as in law, terminological
inexactitude has its implications. In electoral terms, ‘majority’ is
numerical majority as reflected in a particular exercise (e.g.
election), does not have permanence and is generally time-specific;
the same holds for ‘minority’….
“Within the same ambit, but
distinct from it, is the constitutional principle of equality of status
and opportunity, amplified through Articles 14, 15 and 16. This equality
has to be substantive rather than merely
formal and has to be given shape through requisite measures of
affirmative action needed in each case so that the journey on the path
to development has a common starting point. This would be an effective
way of giving shape to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
policy of Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas.…
“Tolerance alone is not a
strong enough foundation for building an inclusive and pluralistic
society. It must be coupled with understanding and acceptance. We must,
said Swami Vivekananda, ‘not only tolerate other
religions, but positively embrace them, as truth is the basis of all
religions’.
“Acceptance goes a step
beyond tolerance. Moving from tolerance to acceptance is a journey that
starts within ourselves, within our own understanding and compassion for
people who are different to us and from our
recognition and acceptance of the ‘other’ that is the raison d’etre of
democracy. The challenge is to look beyond the stereotypes and
preconceptions that prevent us from accepting others. This makes
continuous dialogue unavoidable. It
has to become an essential national virtue to promote harmony
transcending sectional diversities. The urgency of giving this a
practical shape at national, State and local levels through various
suggestions in the public domain is highlighted by enhanced
apprehensions of insecurity amongst segments of our citizen body, particularly Dalits, Muslims and Christians.” The TV interview to Karan Thapar came later.
Ansari proceeded to discuss
the concept of nationalism and quoted the Israeli scholar Yael Tamir,
who said: “Liberal nationalism requires a state of mind characterised by
tolerance and respect of diversity for
members of one’s own group and for others; hence it is polycentric by
definition and celebrates the particularity of culture with the
universality of human rights, the social and cultural embeddedness of
individuals together with their personal autonomy. On
the other hand, the version of nationalism that places cultural
commitments at its core is usually perceived as the most conservative
and illiberal form of nationalism. It promotes intolerance and arrogant
patriotism. What are, or could be, the implications
of the latter for pluralism and secularism? It is evident that both
would be abridged since both require for their sustenance a climate of
opinion and a state practice that eschews intolerance, distances itself
from extremist and illiberal nationalism, subscribes
in word and deed to the Constitution and its Preamble, and ensures that
citizenship irrespective of caste, creed or ideological affiliation is
the sole determinant of Indianness. In our plural secular democracy,
therefore, the ‘other’ is to be none other than
the ‘self’. Any derogation from it would be detrimental to its core
values.”
I have quoted extensively
from this address because of its relevance to the issues under debate.
There are two volumes of his writings and speeches. One is entitled Teasing Questions: Exploring Disconnects in
Contemporary India (2014). Another, published last year, is entitled Citizen and Society (Rupa,
322 pages, Rs.595). It has 45 writings on the polity, including the
judiciary, identity, security, empowerment and matters global. The
speech on “Intelligence
for the World of Tomorrow” makes a powerfully reasoned plea for democratic accountability of the intelligence services.
Barring S. Radhakrishnan and
Zakir Hussain, no Vice President made a comparable contribution. One can
confidently predict that Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu will break
their record.
Ansari’s speech at the
inauguration of the All India Majlis-e-Mushawarat Golden Jubilee on
August 31, 2015, is an excellent contribution which reckons with the
problems and suggests approaches for redress. With
good reason I quote it in extenso.
“It is evident from this
compendium of official reports that the principal problems confronting
India’s Muslims relate to: identity and security; education and
empowerment; equitable share in the largesse of the
state; and fair share in decision-making. Each of these is a right of
the citizen. The shortcomings in regard to each have been analysed
threadbare. The challenge before us today is to develop strategies and
methodologies to address them.
“The default by the state or
its agents in terms of deprivation, exclusion and discrimination
(including failure to provide security) is to be corrected by the state;
this needs to be done at the earliest and appropriate
instruments must be developed for it. Political sagacity, the
imperative of social peace, and public opinion play an important role in
it. Experience shows that the corrective has to be both at the policy
and the implementation levels; the latter, in particular,
necessitates mechanisms to ensure active cooperation of the State
governments. …
“It is evident that
significant sections of the community remain trapped in a vicious circle
and in a culturally defensive posture that hinders self-advancement.
Tradition is made sacrosanct but the rationale of
tradition is all but forgotten. Jadeediyat or modernity has become a
tainted expression. Such mindset constrains critical thinking necessary
both for the affirmation of faith and for the well-being of the
community. The instrumentality of adaptation to change—Ijtihad—is
frowned upon or glossed over. Forgotten is its purpose, defined by the
late Sheikh Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi as ‘the ability to cope with the
ever-changing pattern of life’s requirements’. Equally relevant is Imam
Al-Ghazali’s delineation of the ambit of Maslaha—protection
of religion, life, intellect, lineage and property. Both provide ample
theoretical space for focussed thinking on social change without
impinging on the fundamentals of faith.
“It is here that the role of
Mushawarat becomes critical. As a grouping of leading and most respected
minds of the community, it should go beyond looking at questions of
identity and dignity in a defensive mode
and explore how both can be furthered in a changing India and a
changing world. …
“This would necessitate
sustained and candid interaction with fellow citizens without a syndrome
of superiority or inferiority, and can be fruitful only in the actual
implementation of the principles of justice,
equality and fraternity inscribed in the Preamble to the Constitution
and the totality of Fundamental Rights. The failure to communicate with
the wider community in sufficient measure has tended to freeze the
boundaries of diversities that characterise Indian
society. Efforts may be made to isolate the community; such an approach
should be resisted.
“The Indian experience of a
large Muslim minority living in secular polity, however imperfect, could
even be a model for others to emulate.
“The world of Islam extends
beyond the borders of India, and Muslims here, as in other lands, can
benefit from the best that may be available in the realm of thought and
practice. A few years ago I had occasion
to read the Algerian-French philosopher Mohammed Arkoun and was
impressed by his view that our times compel us to rethink modernity so
that, as he put it, ‘critical thought, anchored in modernity but
criticising modernity itself and contributing to its enrichment
through recourse to the Islamic example’ could open up a new era in
social movements. ‘Verily never will God change the condition of a
people until they change it themselves with their own souls’ (The Quran,
13, 11).
“And so the task before
Mushawarat in the foreseeable future should remain a threefold one; to
sustain the struggle for the actualisation in full measure of legal and
constitutional rights, to do so without being
isolated from the wider community, and to endeavour at the same time to
adapt thinking and practices to a fast-changing world.”
Modi would have loved to face
either a Sarkari Muslim to manipulate or an authentic bigoted
communalist to denounce. He had to face, instead, a patriotic Indian and
a devout Muslim. The clash was of Modi’s choosing.
He made it a clash of Hindu nationalism and Indian nationalism. The
tide of history runs in Hamid Ansari’s favour.
